Japanese food~

Today, I want to share with you a whole load of food pictures!! :D

On Saturday, I invited a few friends over to have a look at the kimono pile for sale. We met at the Eros fountain in Piccadilly Circus, and went to Japan Center for some groceries. We bought obento, and returned to my flat for a quick lunch. April had bought some Japanese sweets from Minamoto Kitchoan, and let us try them!!

Here's what we had:

1) This is called "Sakuranbo", and is a cherry flavoured jelly with a whole cherry inside. Very sweet and absolutely tasty!

On my really cute sakura-shaped plate...

2) Then we had sakura-flavoured wagashi! (Wagashi = Japanese style sweets) Very unique. It isn't very sweet and has a slight salty hint to it, rather like some types of dried plums. The packaging is very cute!

The navy coloured box that looks like sakura trees in the night sky was the one that held the sakura-flavoured wagashi, and the basket covered in a sort of tissue paper held the sakuranbo.

Omg, they were soooo delicious! But also sooooo expensive... Still, I feel like going back to buy more! :P

Thanks, April, for the beautiful sweets!!


Today, Hong came over just for fun and to talk kimono (as always). I baked that green tea cake for her, and although it turned out a disappointment compared to what I wanted it to be, it's still nice in its own way. Here's a picture of a slice!

Yeah, not very green now, is it? Still, the texture was nice.... Also, you can see another of my nice plates :D It's a black rectangular plate with spirals and sakura on it! So cute!! I have a matching bowl to this too hehe. I bought these from Japan Center a long time ago. Now, all the stuff they sell there are not so cute anymore, plus they're so expensive :(

Anyway! For dinner, I made okonomiyaki because I promised Hong I'd teach her how to make it :D I really like how this picture turned out!

For those of you who don't know, okonomiyaki is a type of Japanese savoury pancake that's filled with cabbage, and topped with Japanese mayonnaise, okonomiyaki sauce, seaweed flakes and bonito flakes. I usually buy a special type of okonomiyaki flour that already has the flavourings in it, and make a batter out of 1 cup of the flour, 1/2 cup water and 1 or 2 eggs, then add in 400g partially cooked chopped cabbage and about 1/2 cup chopped frankfurters. Sometimes I'd add things like prawns or mushrooms :)

To cook it, I heat a little bit of vegetable oil in a deep frying pan (the one I use for rosti is a good one, but traditionally, you're supposed to use a flat griddle). Once the oil is relatively hot, I swirl it around to coat the whole bottom of the pan, and turn the heat to the lowest setting. I then pour in a third of the mixture and pat it out into a flat round shape. Cover it, and leave to cook. I don't know how long it takes, but once I feel it's cooked, I slide my spatula (that frying utensil thingy...) under it, and flip it over. It should be a nice golden brown on that side :) Cover it again, and cook till the other side is similarly brown.

Slide it onto a plate, then swirl some mayonnaise on it. Then swirl some okonomiyaki sauce. On top of that, sprinkle some seaweed flakes (I'm very generous with this) then put bonito flakes on top of that. Repeat twice more with the rest of the batter. There you have it! Easy, delicious pancake. The recipe I gave should make two or three okonomiyaki, depending on how thick you make yours. Today's was a little thick, but that was because I only made two pancakes, using half the batter for each.

Mine was a little screwed up today because I accidentally added too much water, so I had to add a bit of flour to estimate the right texture. Still, it turned out tasting alright, so it was okay :)

Hope you enjoyed the photos! :D